


Red With Wine and Roses

by objectlesson



Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Genre: Crime and Cricket, Drunken Confessions, M/M, Pining, Wine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 07:40:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19848598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: Raffles watches, and feels like he is falling, or perhaps like he is already at the pit of something, staring up at a pinprick of light.  ‘You regrettably never really made me do the things I truly desired,” Bunny says then.The parlor is quite suddenly too stuffy to bear, and Raffles gasps.“What? What did you truly desire?” He asks, breath so tight in his throat it stings with each sharp inhalation.





	Red With Wine and Roses

**Author's Note:**

> Another crime and cricket fic! I wrote this right after I finished the first one and didn't post it right away because I was worried it was bad because I feel like I'm shitty at Victorian porn. Went back and read it and it was delightful! So here's some sweetness. Also my third or fourth story with wine in the title? I just really love wine.

Bunny Manders can drink an entire bottle of wine in a single night. 

It impresses and worries Raffles in equal measure, for Bunny is not a _large_ man in any way, and he simply _should not_ be able to put back so much liquor and remain standing, speaking, swaying about the parlor holding a quill on one hand and an empty glass in the other, tipping them back and forth like the scales of fate, yet he _does._

He collapses onto his usual armchair opposite Raffles and gazes across the room with unfocused eyes. “Don’t we have anything else to drink?” he slurs. 

“Certainly,” Raffles tells him, leaning close to swipe the tilting glass from his increasingly slack grip before anything spills on the carpet. “However, I would be a fool to indulge you further in this state. You’re already quite drunker than I’m sure you intended to be.” 

Bunny frowns, cheeks delightfully shiny and pink, flush making his freckles invisible. Raffles imagines the heat of his face burning into his palms were he to cup it, and his hand flexes against his own thigh disdainfully. He should not imagine touching Bunny, especially not when he’s like _this:_ more innocent and helpless than ever. “But. We have _brandy,”_ Bunny reminds him.

 _“_ Yes, we do. Finish this wine first, dear boy,” he mumbles, fitting the glass back into Bunny’s loose grip. He calls him _rabbit_ or _old boy_ most days, but it’s easier to let the _dear_ or _darling_ slip out when Bunny is like this: smiling up at him with a syrupy softness, gaze hazy and warm, tricking him into believing the vile hunger he feels could be mirrored in a vacuum, if only for a moment. 

Bunny licks the rim of the glass before sipping with stained lips. Then, he tries to sit up, wavers, and sits back down. “I want—” he says before his brow furrows, and he sinks, awkwardly but with purpose, to the floor. “Yes, this is what I want. To sit here, upon the carpet. AJ, please…come join me,” he announces, gesturing vaguely to the expanse in front of him. 

Raffles is a fool and a self destructive one at that, so he shakes his head, takes a generous sip of his own glass of wine, and carefully lowers himself to meet Bunny on his level. “Better?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. 

Bunny smiles back, sweet and watery like a sugar-cube melted in the dregs of a teacup. “Yes, better.” 

“I’m empty,” Raffles mumbles, holding his glass up to the light an peering at it. “If we were still in school, I’d demand you go fill it. But you’re not my fag anymore, are you? Just…my friend.” 

It comes out sadder than he means it, as most things do at this hour. Bunny chews his lip and regards him, everything so flushed and bright he looks scrubbed-clean at the Turkish baths, tumbled with stones to become glittery. He is the brightest thing in any room, even like this, dulled by drink and the hours after midnight stacked against him.”Am I not still your fag?” Bunny scoffs, dragging a clumsy hand through the sweat-wrecked flaxen mess of his hair. “I feel like am I, still…forever tripping…tripping after the great AJ Raffles. Worshipping at an altar.” 

Raffles balks, his gut clenching. “You don’t _worship_ me, Bunny.” 

Bunny laughs. “But I do! You only don’t think so because I’m somewhat of an expect at concealing it. I wish—sometimes I wish we were back in school, you see. Because it would be easier…more acceptable, really, to be the way I am, want the things I want. Though,” he mumbles, mouth flickering with a peculiar sort of softness, corners just short of downturning. Raffles watches, and feels like he is falling, or perhaps like he is already at the pit of something, staring up at a pinprick of light. ‘You regrettably never _really_ made me do the things I _truly_ desired,” Bunny says then. 

The parlor is quite suddenly too stuffy to bear, and Raffles gasps. 

“What? What did you truly desire?” He asks, breath so tight in his throat it stings with each sharp inhalation. He wishes he could stand up and light a Sullivan, but they’re resting on the mantle and he’s afraid to move, when Bunny is so close like his, only an arm’s span away from him, on the floor, poised at the edge of some great precipice, speaking like he's in a confessional booth.

“Oh,” Bunny mumbles, closing his eyes and waving a hand messily though the air between them as if to dissipate the smoke Raffles has not blown from his lips. “You know. The sort of thing McHanigan did for Posey, back in school. Lots of seniors asked their fag to—you know, it’s a dirty, unspeakable but surely you know. Though you never asked for it, even if I wished you had. I would dream of it, sometimes, lie awake at night imagining how it would feel,” he smiles self deprecatingly, eyes twitching beneath the lids while Raffles’ whole world crumbles about him. “If you had asked to use my mouth.” 

Raffles drops his glass. “I—I beg your pardon?” he sputters, heart in his throat, choking him so the breath comes out thin and reedy. “Darling Rabbit,” he whispers then, clutching at the carpet with scrabbling hands. “I beg of you, do not say things you shan't mean come morning.” 

“I mean these words always,” Bunny mumbles, shaking his head, eyes wide and swimming. “I am just too—it frightens me to say them. But on a night like tonight? When we've _stolen_ so much and haven't gotten caught, and there’s _brandy_ to be had after the wine… it feels, foolishly, like the world is on our side. Like I can say anything, and it won’t matter.” 

“It matters,” Raffles murmurs. “Of course it matters.” 

“You aren’t angry with me?” Bunny whispers then, the honeyed curl of his voice the most lovely thing, lit up like a fire. “I always thought you’d be angry, if you knew.” 

“No,” Raffles announces, shifting across the carpet towards Bunny to steal his glass again, this time once and for all. Their fingers brush and Bunny sighs, his eyes sliding closed for a moment like time stopping, the universe holding its breath. Raffles pauses, breath hitching as Bunny falls limp against him, cheek hot against his lapel as they sprawl messily together against the base of Bunny’s chair. Raffles is drunk, too, far drunker than he realizes, so he lets his hand skitter up the back of Bunny’s neck to tangle in his sweat-damp wreck of hair, the world spinning around him in a dizzying blur. “I am not angry.” 

Bunny hums, eyes fluttering closed. “I’m glad,” he whispers. “It was a secret, one I kept for so long. Sometimes it felt like it was burning me up from the inside, and one way you would just—you’d find me nothing but a charred husk.” 

“Darling, Bunny,” Raffles mumbles, eyes stinging, insides gathering like a fist as his heart pounds against Bunny’s cheek. He doesn't know what else to say, doesn't know any words in this moment beyond those of endearment, sensation swelling inside him so fiercely his heart might rupture. 

“Hm?” he rumbles, lips pursed into the shape of a kiss, wine-red there against the black of Raffles smoking jacket. 

“Would you—“ Raffles cuts himself off, holding his breath as Bunny settles against him, palm moving to spread absently over the frantic thud of his heartbeat as if trying to slow it. “Is this— _secret,_ you speak of. Is it something long dead, left in the past? Or would you—what would you do if i asked such a thing of you now?” Because he’s drunk and the parlor is swimming in a red-gold haze around him andhe _must_ know if this ache which weakens him day after day might be something _shared between them,_ like a red ribbon tying his wrist to Bunny Manders’ in the dark. 

Bunny laughs, and his exhalation is grape sweet, alcohol bitter. “There is not a single thing on this earth I would not break my own back to do for you, AJ Raffles. Except leave. And that is all.” 

Raffles’s fingers stutter to a stop at the base of Bunny’s skull. “I see,” he says, heart arrested, breath coming in short, frantic pulls under Bunny’s solid weight. They sit this way for too long, and his mind races, his stomach clenches and unclenches and clenches again each time Bunny shifts gently against him. “You know, there is not a single thing on earth I would not do for you, either. Perhaps it is an affliction we share,” he eventually whispers. 

But Bunny rubs his face into his chest and says something unintelligible, too drunk to properly respond. So Raffles decides there is nothing to be done but to stay here, his arms looped disbelievingly around the rise and fall of Bunny’s shoulders, and wonder, and wonder. 

—-

Raffles awakens, stiff backed, to the sound of rustling. 

Fragments of the night come back to him in hazy increments. Bunny pouring himself glass after glass of wine, his already lush mouth darkening like a bruise, swollen and hot as he pressed it into the pulse point at Raffle’s throat, not a kiss but something frightfully similar. Bunny saying, in so many words, he _wished_ Raffles had taken advantage of that mouth back when they were in school, demanding sexual favors of him as so many older students did of their fags. 

Raffles would be lying if he were to say the idea had never crossed his mind. Of course it had, even _then_ Bunny was soft and pretty and so overwhelmingly eager it was difficult to _not_ imagine all the things he might be willing to do, and do well, do _gratefully_. However, wielding power over Bunny simply because he _could_ was never something Raffles chose to do: he thought of his mouth, yes. The delicious pout of it, how it might look stretched tight into an obscene ring, how his eyes would water, shining up at him adoringly as they always did. But he didn’t want Bunny to commit such an act simply because it was _asked_ of him. He didn’t want it to be just another fagging duty he joyfully completed. If he had Bunny in such a way, he wanted it to be because Bunny _desired_ him. Because _Bunny_ asked for it. 

But Bunny was, and still is, very much in the habit of following orders rather than making demands himself. So, Raffles never pushed the matter, and that glorious, burning thing never happened. 

Now, lying on his own carpet in the dark with a pounding head and Bunny’s gentle stirring beside him, he’s forced to think about it again. About the nature of desire, and speaking the unspeakable. Bunny is infuriatingly warm in this moment, radiating waves of tremendous heat, but Raffles can also feel him shiver under the weight of his own arm, so he instinctively draws him closer. “Wake up, rabbit,” he murmurs, inhaling the scent of cigars and sweat and London night from his hair. “Seems we feel asleep on the parlor floor like ruffians. Terribly undignified. The lanterns burnt out.” 

Bunny makes a sound, rolls over and nuzzles closer before seemingly realizing where he is, who he’s with. He reels away, gasping, suddenly awake. “AJ? Oh dear,” he mumbles, hands sweat-sticky and clumsy as they palm up Raffles’s forearms, pushing him away at the same time he holds him fast. “I was quite drunk. Did I—did I do anything foolish?” 

Raffles tries to laugh, but it comes out a sharp, humorless cough. “No. You were perfectly charming,” he confesses, every word so raw it’s weeping lymph. 

Bunny tenses beside him, breath a sharp, audible intake as his nails dig into the meat of Raffles’s forearm. Time suspends between them for a moment and Raffles simply cannot stand it anymore, he cannot lie here on the floor imagining Bunny’s mouth, an indistinct smear of heat in the shadows. So, he reaches out to find it, fingers bumping against Bunny’s stubble-rough jawline, finding a blessed point of solidity in the darkness before rubbing his thumb over the sweet, slack shape of his lips. Bunny stirs, whimpers, pauses like he’s not sure any of this is really happening. And then, he opens his mouth under the pressure and everything is wet. 

Raffles is not certain what of this is truly happening, either. Though however soft his memory may be around the edges, he cannot shake the haunting sincerity of Bunny’s voice murmuring _There is not a single thing on this earth I would not break my own back to do for you, AJ Raffles._ So, he rises on tremulous hands and knees, brackets Bunny between them, and kisses his wine-sour mouth, terribly soft, achingly slow. 

Bunny shudders beneath him, stunned and slack even as Raffles exhales straight into his parted lips before chasing that breath with his tongue. He tastes like night and wine and darkness and self-recrimination and Raffles wants to lick that all up, wants to replace it with sweetness, with certainty. There is a moment where Bunny’s hands flutter like wounded birds against the carpet, but then they move to cup Raffles face, tracing the the bones with prudent fingers, and then, _then_ he breaks like the tide, surging up into the kiss, froth and foam and salt and _oh,_ Raffles forgets he needs to breathe, so he stops until he’s so dizzy he feels like he might collapse. 

“I’m dreaming,” Bunny chokes out as they part to desperately inhale, stars exploding behind Raffles eyes, his chest too tight to fully expand. “Or else—I choked to death on wine, and somehow escaped hell in spite of every impure desire I've ever hidden from you. Everything I’ve ever stolen by your side.” 

“Dearest, my darling,” Raffles murmurs, kissing down his throat, heart threatening to pound out of his chest, drown them both in a rain of blood. “You’re still drunk.” 

“Perhaps,” Bunny murmurs, touching Raffles hair, sifting fingers wild and hungry through the oiled black curls, lips bumping against the cut of his chin. Bunny is soft and hot and _alive_ beneath him, moving, shifting, testing every point at which their bodies are pressed flush as if searching for a fracture in reality. Raffles loves him so fiercely his eyes sting and spill over, vision cloudy even as it adjusts to the darkness. “Or perhaps this is heaven.” 

Raffles palms down his chest, stunned by the heat of his skin, and deep, ragged breaths that push the shape of his ribcage up to fit his hands. “I never asked for you to pleasure me in school. Would you like to know why?” he breathes, kissing the corner of Bunny’s mouth, the tail of his eye, so many peripheries and forgotten edges. He does not wait for Bunny to answer before confessing, “I could never accept such a thing without knowing you did not _need it,_ as men need water, and sleep, and touch, and love. As I need you. I couldn’t allow you to touch me in such a way were I not sure you weren’t doing so out of obligation. But now, we are equals. So, I ask you, Bunny. May I use that lovely mouth?” 

He sobs against Raffles’ shoulder, face hot, body trembling, hands ghosting over flesh in awed, reverent strokes. “Raffles _please,”_ he murmurs. “Every inch of me is at your mercy.” 

Raffles takes that to heart. He touches like he’s fashioning a map, like he’s discovering and naming stars to plot a ships course home by. So many parts of Bunny he’s stared at, committed to memory, sketched out in his mind’s eye with the softest graphite, are now warm and sweet beneath his palms, his kisses. The cut of his shoulder, the ditch beneath his clavicle, the freckled stretch of skin between his pectorals where no hair grows, no matter how stubbornly Bunny has willed it to. Lower, the soft swell of flesh above the dig of his belt, the curve of his stomach dusted in fair blonde. He touches and he traces and he licks the perspiration until Bunny is bucking and shivering and his grip is punishingly tight in Raffles’ hair. “No,” he chokes out, fists unrelenting. “You, on your back. I always imagined it with you on your back. Reading a school book perhaps, studying, paying me no mind while I— _God, Raffles,_ tell me, tell me again.” 

“Tell you what?” Raffles asks, voice wrecked, hoarse and raw. He presses a heavy, open-mouthed kiss to the skin stretched tight over Bunny’s hip bone, and reluctantly rolls onto his back, body wedged between the chair and the coffee table. “That I adore you?” 

“It’s too much,” Bunny cries, clumsily following Raffles, rolling on top of him, rubbing his face into the flat plane of his abdominals, where his stomach keeps dropping time and time again. “I never—I thought you might use me, think of someone else while I had you.And I accepted that. But I never thought you might want me this way. That you might kiss me.” 

“Dear, sweet Rabbit, I love you, I have always loved you,” Raffles prays, tangling his hand in Bunny’s sweat-damp hair, pushing him lower since he suspect he’ll need to guide this, at least the first time. “I’ve always _desired_ you. Feel now, feel it,” he murmurs, canting up into Bunny’s lips. “This is what you have always done to me.” 

Bunny groans into the steel-hard heat, pressing his face into the crux of Raffles legs and inhaling, hands making surprisingly quick work of his trousers, as if he has thought of such a thing, practiced it. Raffles lets his head thunk back down the the floorboards, fingers coursing repeatedly through Bunny’s hair, silently begging, thinking _my god, how did I ever survive years of school, years of_ loneliness, _without him by my side?_

There are kisses before anything else. Nearly dry presses of his soft lips, breath in tremulous gales, and Raffles is shivering to pieces even _before_ it becomes wet, filthy, suffocating. The rumble of Bunny’s voice beneath the maddening suction is enough to drive him close, knowing this isn’t a dream, or a wish, or a mistake. It’s Bunny, his dear, his daring rabbit fagging for him years after school ended, wrecked and split and sucking, until the carpet is spit-wet beneath both of them. 

When Raffles finishes his vision whites out like the first snow of winter, and he makes a sound akin to grieving, to letting go. It’s a long held weight, his hunger for Bunny, and to have it swallowed, doused and diluted in wine, feels like the end of something. The beginning of something else. “There is not a single thing on this earth I would not break my own back to do for you, Bunny Manders,” he whispers, thumbing over the arch of his eyebrow. “Not a single thing.” 

Bunny sighs, rubs his cheek into the inside of Raffles’ thigh. “Well then, will you take me to bed and hold me there? While I sleep?” 

“Sleep? You don’t want _my_ mouth in return?” 

“Tomorrow,” Bunny says with a yawn, hands petting over the twin juts of Raffles’ hips tenderly. “I had too much wine, tonight. I cannot enjoy anything save for the way you taste, and the hope you might feed me water as dawn comes, and stay with me as it passes.” 

“Darling,” Raffles says, kissing his own fingers before pressing them to Bunny’s forehead where the cross is drawn for ash Wednesday. _Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return_. He feels scattered by the wind, one hundred hopes and one hundred kisses, all of which will land here and settle into the sweet pout of Bunny’s lips, when the wind ceases its endless tirade and the world settles in its wake. “I shall stay.” 


End file.
